The American Feed Industry Association is pleased with the agreement reached among the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Environmental Health to create a new timeline for the Food Safety Modernization Act rules. FDA and the two advocacy groups reached a settlement in the case appealing the strict, court-imposed deadlines for FDA's publication of final versions of the rules.

"Giving FDA two more months to finalize human and animal food rules will help the agency, but what the feed industry really needs is two more months to develop our comments. Unfortunately, this agreement does not allow FDA to extend existing comment periods," explained Richard Sellers, AFIA's senior vice president of legislative and regulatory affairs.

AFIA continues to work feverishly with its membership to solicit feedback and input to the comments for the proposed rules.